Sitting with my back to the snow which starts at the
door to this table and this bench next to the altar that holds
a dish with money from Costa Rica and India in it
and from here, with a large rock holding it all down next to the
candle next to the
window next to the
door to the snow and the
footprints filling one by
one back to you
and now they are smooth and white.

Technorati Tags: poem, Poetry, Literature, and Writing

Out with my son, getting late morning fuel at the Laughing Goat.

Posted via email from Patti’s posterous

Technorati Tags: coffee

Tom Waits reads a Charles Bukowski poem. I’ve always loved Bukowski’s poetry, even in spite of the fact that most poetry magazine information sheets tell you that they won’t accept Bukowski type poems. They’re getting awfully bloodless, these modern poetry places.

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Technorati Tags: Charles Bukowski, poem, Poetry, Literature, and Writing, Tom Waits

… I came across this, from a visit to Giverny a couple of years ago.

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Technorati Tags: Giverny, Monet, travel

From staring today at the sidewalks of Boulder, I have come up with a realization: Those young kids who want to have the glory of participating in modern culture, but actually have nothing to say, will scrawl the names of dead black musicians on walls and sidewalks. This is true whether here in Boulder, or in Tel Aviv.

What started this train of thought off for me was seeing, yet again, the name of Bob Marley underfoot on a sidewalk slab, having been scratched there by someone before the cement dried. I immediately thought of the graffiti I had seen throughout one of the less affluent neighborhoods of Tel Aviv: 2PAC.

Dead black musicians, whom the graffiti-writers were not themselves old enough to have known when they were alive: Bob Marley and Tupac Shakur. I could make the clichéd remark that all great musicians and artists speak to those who come after them; in fact, I just have. I know that at least in Bob Marley’s case, his popularity is widespread even in those socio-economic classes that he was not trying to encourage. I am convinced that it would be an easy task to get a roomful of drunken bank presidents and other Republicans to sing along with “Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!”

I have no idea whether this is what Bob Marley intended or wanted for his songs, but there it is. Music ends up in the strangest places, like sidewalks in Boulder and walls in Tel Aviv.

[And no, "2PAC" is not what it says on that picture. I just liked the picture of this other graffiti in Tel Aviv.]

… He had also wandered in the woods where one finds happiness, or at least peace, and he knew the words that fit the locked compartments of the soul, like keys, and open them.

— Halldor Laxness

Technorati Tags: qotd

Found a bit of Omar Khayyam in the sidewalk in Boulder.

I am sorry to report to you that our newest addition to the family, Rocky the Squirrel, has met a sad end. As I reported before, Rocky had suddenly appeared in our laundry room. We didn’t see him at all after my initial sighting of him (her?), though he left many traces of his presence around the floor, and in a just-washed comforter that he nested in.

Then, my husband made the mistake of unloading some laundry out of one basket. There he found the mortal remains of Rocky, who had evidently given up the nest in the comforter for the laundry basket, where he suffocated himself.

We had a short funeral by the garbage can, and did lots and lots more laundry, after getting rid of the comforter. The cats and the dog, who had been behaving strangely around the house in the past couple of days, are returning to normal.

We have a new pet. This was a completely unexpected and inadvertent acquisition on our part; it just showed up. A squirrel.

I was down in the laundry room this morning, apropos of nothing in particular, when I hear a tiny scrabbling sound above me. I look up, and there the squirrel is, on top of a steam pipe by the wall, frozen with one eye staring at me. I stared at it, and wondered what to do.

The squirrel didn’t look to be ill or starving or in any distress. I couldn’t think of a reason to be afraid of it. It found its way into the house by unknown means, and I assume it can leave when it wants. Now I want to know whether I should feed it, and what we’re going to name it.